"We do what we must, Lucien. Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all."

"'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.' Eh, little brother-killer?" "Suh-certainly, Lord Lucifer. Whatever you say, Lord Lucifer." "We didn't say it. Milton said it. And he was blind."

"They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to Him... to Him we no longer speak."

"You must know, of course, of the Cainites? ... They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation in all things. And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any other religion. Amusing, isn't it?"

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the seasons of mists; and may each and everyone of us always give the devil his due."

"You know, the idea of what someone like you considers a long time sends shivers down my spine."

"Times is, times was, time's past, Sir Robert." "Bold as brass, ma'am."

"I move from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what I need. Slipping and sliding and flickering through dreams; and the dreamers will wake and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can truly be."

"Well, at least you've got the element of surprise on your side." "That would not be honorable, Matthew. I have already sent a messenger to the Lord of Hell, to let him know that I will be coming. One must do these things properly."

"I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it."

"Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so."

"Delirium was once Delight. And although that was long ago now, even today her eyes are badly matched; one eye is a vivid emerald green, spattered with silver flecks that move; her other eye is vein blue. Who knows what Delirium sees, through her mismatched eyes?"

"Destiny is the oldest of the Endless; in the Beginning was the Word, and it was traced by hand on the first page of his book, before ever it was spoken aloud. ... Destiny smells of dust and the libraries of night. He leaves no footprints. He casts no shadow."

"Despair, Desire's sister and twin, is queen of her own bleak bourne. It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart."

"Desire smells almost subliminally of summer peaches, and casts two shadows: one black and sharp-edged, the other translucent and forever wavering, like heat haze. ... Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And there is much else that is knife-like about Desire. Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything."

"The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death there is no ending to them."

"The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness."

"Who am I? Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe. Sorry I couldn't help any. Be seeing you..."

"Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you."

"When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."

"Anyway: I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them."

"And you've come for me? Blessed, merciful death. You've come to make it all stop?" "No. I haven't come for you, Rainie. There was a woman upstairs, changing the light bulb in her kid's room. The stepladder slipped... like I said, I was passing and I heard you crying, and, well, the door was open..."

"They say that cigarettes will kill you, eventually. Fine. That's just fine. I only wish they'd do it faster. ... I like smoking cigarettes. It's something normal people do. I smoke a cigarette, and pretend I'm normal. And I wish I was dead."

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold. That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen's beauty in a brow of egypt. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from Earth to Heaven. And, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown... the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

"During your stay on this Earth the faerie have afforded me much diversion, and entertainment. Now you have left, for your own haunts. And I would repay you all for the amusement. And more. They shall not forget you. That was important to me: that King Auberon and Queen Titania will be remembered by mortals, until this age is gone."

"But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... but the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted."

"Things have changed, and will change more; and Gaia no longer welcomes us as once she did."

"You played me well, mortal. But I have played me for time out of mind. And I do Robin Goodfellow better than anyone."

"This is magnicifent—and it's true! It never happened, yet it is still true! What magic art is this?"

"None of those women are women at all. They're males. I can tell. Human males taste more like rabbit than the females—and they stick in your teeth."

"'I am that merry wanderer of the night'? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it." "Shush, Peaseblossom. The puck might hear you!"

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"So... we are here on your command, my lord, on Midsummer's Eve, by the Long Man of Wilmington. An odd choice of a place for us to perform..." "Odd? Wendel's Mound was a theatre before your race came to this island." "Before the Normans?" "Before the humans."

"Little one, I would like to see anyone—prophet, king or God—persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time."

"Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it truly is. A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is my message. And I shall keep moving, keep repeating it, until I die. Or until a thousand cats hear my words, and believe them, and dream... and we come again to paradise."

"If enough of us dream... if a bare thousand of us dream... we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule."

"They dreamed the world so it always was the way it is now, little one. There never was a world of high cat-ladies and cat-lords."

"All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past. We can watch the passage of creatures from the infinity of now, from all the worlds like ours, only fractionally different. And we follow them with our eyes, ghost things, and the humans see nothing."

"Justice?" It repeated. "Justice is a delusion you will not find on this or any other sphere. And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams, lithe walker, though dreams are a part of the sum of each life's experiences, which is the only wisdom that matters. But revelation? That is the province of dream."

"Gryphons shouldn't marry. Vampires don't dance. A man who inherits a library card to the library in Alexandria. A rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog-collar."

"The fraternity of critics, in reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a critical mass..."

"You, uh, p-promise it isn't going to, hmmm, explode? Promise?" "Now, why would I give you an exploding present? What kind of brother would I be if I did that?" "My kind of b-brother."

"And Desire walks the endless pathways of its body, certain that he, or she, or it, is in sole and only control of its destiny. The only inhabitant of the twilight realm of Desire; and it feels nothing like a doll. Nothing like a doll at all."

"Human beings are the creatures of desire. They twist and bend as I require it. If I thought otherwise, I would crack, like Delirium; or I would abandon my realm, like our lost brother."

"Desire, listen to me carefully. Remember this. We of the Endless are the servants of the living—we are not their masters. We exist because they know, deep in their hearts, that we exist."

""And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings."

"If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a lie. It means the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in the depths that I don't even want to think about. It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored."

"I do not understand—" "Of course you don't. You're obviously not very bright, but I shouldn't let it bother you."

"I left because I was curious. And because I was tired. Life as a human contains substance I never dreamed of in the Dreaming, Lord. The little victories, and the tiny defeats. I had my reasons."